47. Your Doctor Isn’t Telling You the Full Story About Heart Disease with Dr. Michael Twyman

WEBVTT
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So just pounding blue light all their long can raise your blood sugar.
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You can beat hackins, get no carbohydrates, and still be diabetic,
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because you're using technology at the wrong times a day.
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And that light comes in the eyes, and it raises ACTH.
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That's going to raise cortisol, or cortisol is going to tell your liver pump out more glucose.
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When we think about cardiometabolic factors, no one's really finding the interconnectivity.
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Like we're not connecting the dots on how our body is systemic.
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It works as a system, and how something like your metabolic health could influence
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or maybe be a predictor of whether or not you're at risk for cardiovascular disease.
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Do you have your patients wear a glucose monitor?
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Welcome, Dr. Michael Tyman, to Rooted in Wellness.
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I'm so excited to meet you today.
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Thank you for the opportunity. It's going to be fun.
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Yeah, so a dear friend of a shout out to Drew ProHit for making the introduction
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myself in so many others, but he's been singing your praises for so long.
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Just in the way that you speak, I know a big part of your passion is just like
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disease prevention when it comes to cardiovascular disorders.
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So we're going to dive into all of that, because I really want to crack the code for so many people
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who are confused around the numbers that they're seeking, the tests that they're doing,
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we'll go into all of that today.
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Sounds fun.
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So to get going, to tell you a bit about the podcast.
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So this podcast is all about ancient wisdom in our modern world,
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and how we can become more rooted, and that's a feeling of feeling rooted in ourselves,
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but also in our health and even in our knowingness to heal.
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So we'd love to know from you as a cardiologist, what are some things that help you feel
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extremely rooted in your health and who you are?
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So I'm very big in disircating biology, obviously, by, you know,
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we're in the biohacking glasses, and so we are beings of light.
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So I've tried to optimize my environment always to be, you know,
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ideally outside, but if I'm inside, I always have the proper kind of light signal.
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So in my office where I'm at right now, I have windows on both sides,
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getting natural light in, I have some UVA lights, I got some red lights coming into my room.
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So I'm always trying to get the right light signals into my eyes on skin,
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but my, you know, grounding practice would be literally be outside grounding,
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placing the sun early in the morning at sunrise.
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You were so great, you're such a great advocate for reminding people about these simple
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practices, and I think every picture that I've seen of you,
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you're some sort of like glasses, we'll talk about that and it's impact on the body.
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So let's consider just the opposite side for a second.
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So you mentioned something that's grounding to you, but on the opposite side,
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what's something that causes you to feel uprooted?
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You know, I know you see probably many patients today who you'd think on the outside,
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they're meditating or journaling, but still they come to see you and they're not feeling
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their best. So what are some things that cause you to feel uprooted?
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I think it's the double ed sort of, you know, devices are screens.
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Now this is how we're connected, this I'm chatting with you over the, you know,
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the interrupts as I say, but people kind of get sucked into these devices,
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and the technology, well, great to be able to communicate,
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there's also somewhat of a health issue with it because the artificial light that comes
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off these devices confuse our body's timing mechanisms. So I know myself, I know how addicted
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these devices can potentially be, and I always have to kind of catch myself, okay,
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that's enough technology for the day, it's time to wind down for the rest of the night.
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Yeah, they had so important, and I still, I don't understand why, with what we're learning
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around the impact of light on our circadian rhythm, we're still not normalizing, changing,
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our light bulbs are wearing these glasses, which are so inexpensive.
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So let's pause on that because I know that you're going to deep dive on how that impacts our health.
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So as a nutritionist, I think that one of the biggest kind of assumptions are that people
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don't have to worry about their heart health until they're older. It's a mindset that I think
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that we have to shift, especially we know now living in this era of hyperwellness, we know more
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about health than ever before, and yet the issues and rates of cardiovascular disease are on the
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rise. So why is this something that we need to start considering, and do you tell your clients
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at a certain age to come in to see you? So it's a great question, and one of my mentors actually
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educate me that, you know, atherosclerosis or plaque in your arteries, heart disease,
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it starts in utero, it starts before we even burn. We have up to 60,000 miles of blood vessels,
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and there's a lining in the article that's like okay, Lex, it's a protective gel coating lining
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in the arteries. So you're born, and there's many things in your environment that ultimately can
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damage that protective coating. So most people don't notice this is happening until they're 40,
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50 years old, but it really starts early in life. Incredible. So in utero, and in curious, do you do
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things like genetic testing with everyone that comes through your office? Not necessarily everyone,
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and your question is like, who should be screened? Well, very much anybody over the
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40 should consider getting the heart screen because atherosclerosis is more common as you age,
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but if you have a very strong family history where somebody's having an heart attack in their 40s,
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50s, 60s, you may want to start getting really screened earlier in life. Then those people,
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it's more likely you're going to start with genetics. There's a few genes that tend to run in
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families if they have currently cardiovascular disease. Right. Yeah, I'm curious. I'm so
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hyper aware. We'll talk about my heart surgery in a little bit, but the understanding around
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my genetics being at more risk for a predisposition for cardiovascular disorders, but also being
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South Asian. So we know that there are certain ethnicities that might be more prone to the risk
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of heart disease. What precautions would you recommend, and are you seeing a prevalence of this
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anymore? Like, is this something that you still would say is true or has it become more widespread?
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I mean, it's, you know, the are certain genetic populations that are at higher risk,
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but I always tell patients out, your genes are what you inherit from your patients,
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your epigenetic, your environment determines how much those genes are actually activated.
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And because your genetics, you know, are not mutable, but your mitochondria, your epigenetics,
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is. So just because you have a bad genetic predisposition, if you do things differently than your
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parents, you'll probably have a different outcome. But that being said, certain genetics give people
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the false sense that they're going to be okay, just because they're not overweight. It does not
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mean that you don't have significant catharsis on the inside. You can be insulin resistant and not
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be heavy. Okay. That's such a great point about epigenetics, whether or not we're pulling the
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trigger on specific diseases. With that said, I'm still concerned. So let's talk about going
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into our doctors. So over the past 15 years, when I'm looking at cardiovascular blood panels that
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have been done, one, the panels are all different. I have very few doctors who are looking at, you
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know, all things from particle sizes or checking on APOA or APOB was kind of the gold standard. If
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people listening or didn't go into their doctor and they want to do a full cardiovascular panel,
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what do you say they need to be checking on? Let's take a quick break from this episode to talk
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What is in your blood is important, but you also have to actually look at the health of the
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arteries. There's the biochemical and then there's the bio-physical. On the biochemical,
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I usually break it down to three big buckets. The bucket one is what is affecting the nitrogoxide
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pathways? Nitrogocides are a critical molecule for cardiovascular health. Nitrogocides
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with dilated arteries that helps keep your blood pressure normal. Nitrogocides prevents things
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basically from sticking to the arteries in the first place. The second bucket is looking at
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markers of oxidative stress and inflammation. How much fire is in your arteries at this time?
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The more inflammation your body carries, the more likely that protective gel code that glycocalics
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in your arteries will be damaged and you're more prone to developing plaque. And then the third bucket
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is going to be the lipoproteins. So cholesterol is not the bogeyman. We don't have cholesterol
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just because it's going to give us a heart attack or stroke. We have cholesterol because we need it
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for our hormones or bile acids or some membranes. So without cholesterol, we're not alive.
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But because cholesterol is a waxy compound, it's not going to float in our liquid blood.
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So our body makes things, as you know, that called lipoproteins. They're lipid-proking carriers.
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And so, if anybody's watching the video, I always show a little tennis ball example.
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The tennis ball is the lipoprotein. The cholesterol goes inside, is the passenger,
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and then this is floating through your blood to be delivered to one of your other organs who needs
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something inside the lipoprotein. So that can be assessed. It's the LDL particles that you're
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really wanting to look at. And then there's something called apolipoprotein B or apobee for short.
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The example that I just showed the tennis ball, that's basically the LDL particles.
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Apobee would be the swipe stripe on this tennis ball that holds this thing together in the
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sphere. And the apobee is what allows it to bind to different receptors. So apobee is on the
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outside of all the lipoproteins that could particularly injure your arteries. Most of the time,
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it's going to be just your LDL particles. But 20% of the population has some called lipoprotein A
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or L.P. Little A. And that is genetically predetermined what levels you'll have.
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So, families with strong family histories of askurises often carry L.P. L.A.
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And if you have a high apobee, you got to make sure they don't have L.P. L.A.
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Fascinating. I was shocked on my last run of blood lads. My L.P.A. just shot up.
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And I'm, you know, from the practitioners that I've been meeting with,
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there's not a whole lot that we can do except for follow and adhere to kind of like a cardiovascular
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healthy lifestyle, which I'm already doing. Is that true? So at this time, there are not great
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pharmaceutical options to lower lipoprotein L.A. The the injectable PSAS K9 inhibitors that's mainly
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repat the impregnant. They may lower L.P. L.A. up to 30% or so. But we don't know yet if that's
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really clinically relevant. There are at least five drugs in up to phase three trials that are
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trying to show that if you lower L.P.A. by 90% or greater, are you lowering the risk of heart attacks,
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strokes, need for procedures or dying? The things that patients actually care about. So it's likely
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that those drugs, at least one of them will be released in 2025. But in the interim, even if we
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can't necessarily lower directly, and the sidebar is that actually there is a procedure called
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A4resis where you get hooked up to a machine. It pulls your blood out. They can pull the L.P.A. out,
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and then you can go about living your life for a while. But usually within two to three weeks,
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the L.P.A. builds back up. So you got to go back in for the procedure. It's a procedure more common
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in Germany, not so common in the US. But I did misspeak. There is one FDA-proof technology for
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lowering L.P.A. Just most people aren't going to choose to do it. But in the interim, you can do
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things that lower your vascular risk by keeping oxy stress and inflammation low. It's because L.P.A.
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is somewhat of a scavenger. It's only going to really, quote, injure your arteries if you have a
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lot of oxidized phospholipids around. High enzymes called L.P.P.A. to activity. Those things are
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high. Your arteries aren't fired. L.P.A. is more likely involved with that. So I always check that
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on the blood work because not everybody with L.P.A. goes on to have plaque or events. And then the
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people who have high L.P.A. and inflammation, those are the people you're really concerned about.
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Got it. Okay. So I love the analogy of the tennis ball. That was really helpful. I love that you
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have it there. Okay. So nitric oxide, oxidative stress and inflammatory plaque and lipo proteins.
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So I feel like nitric oxide and the nutritional world kind of was on a rise for a little bit. I think
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it was around bodybuilding specifically and vascular support. This isn't to say that people just
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should go out and start supplementing with nitric oxide or eating a ton of beats or beats powder
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or I think L.P.A. also is that boost nitric oxide? Yeah. Which I take because of a deficiency
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that I had. But tell us about who, when, why to take this? So nitric oxide, it's so critically
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important that the discovery of it in 1998 and it's role in the cardiovascular health,
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one that three scientists, the Nobel Prize in medicine. They're redundant pathways in the body
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because if you lower nitric oxide, almost everything's going to go downhill, particularly, you know,
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catharsis risk, diabetes risk, brain fog, lots of things go wrong if you don't make sufficient
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nitric oxide. So the major way people make nitric oxide before the age of 40 is when blood flows
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across the lining of the arteries. This is one of the reasons why exercises so protective for
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longevity is because that increased blood flow during exercise causes the stimulation to release
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nitric oxide from the shear stresses going across that gelco, that glyco-calux. But after the age
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of 40, there's an enzyme called endothelial nitric oxide synthase or e-nose for short. You'd
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mention arginine. It's an amino acid. Most people are not deficient in arginine, but what happens is
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that enzyme that converts arginine to citreline, it slows down. The presence of oxygen and arginine
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nitric oxide and el citreline is going to be produced. So you can shove all the arginine into the
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system, but if the person has a weak e-nose enzyme, they're not going to make more nitric oxide.
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So the body has a backup pathway where if you eat foods high in nitrates, which for the most
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part of the dark green leaves, you have vegetables or beads, then if you have healthy bacteria in
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your mouth, so meaning you're not using, you know, antiseptic mouthwash where you kill all the good
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bacteria. There's these nitrate-reducing bacteria that break down those nitrates and those
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foodstuffs, you swallow it, and eventually through a process, it becomes nitric oxide. So people
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who damage the lower microbiome and are aging, they kind of got to double hit. They start having
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lower and lower nitric oxide. So how can you optimize nitric oxide? Exercise is going to help
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it as blood's flowing across the line of the arteries, eating your green leafy vegetables,
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ideally, and then sunlight. UVA spectrum of sunlight when it hits your skin is going to liberate
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nitric oxide. So often they're like it's kind of like filling a funnel, you're just trying to put
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a ton of nitric oxide into the top of the funnel, so it drips down. Yeah, I'm a cardiologist,
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but you know, there's guys that come in and they're talking about, you know, ED type issues.
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ED equals ED. If you have erectile dysfunction, most likely of nitric oxide issues. And then
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people prescribe, you know, the biograph, the sales type medications. And it's fine if that works
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for them, but the issue is that they don't have enough nitric oxide often. And you give those
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medicines, all it does is keep nitric oxide around longer. It doesn't give the person nitric oxide.
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So the medicine works for you. Then it just means there's something wrong with your
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nitric oxide pathways. Go looking for what's causing that. Wow. Okay, we have to unpack that. Let's
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hover on this because I know how many people's attention erectile dysfunction is assigned in
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symptom of nitric oxide deficiency. And so that you can look into that is so important for the men
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and the woman. Obviously, great to know. When we work our way upstream, you mentioned the oral
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microbiome and you're the first cardiologist to mention oral microbiome to me, even though we know
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that there's a relationship to heart health and our oral health. So we're doing so much though
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to deplete our oral microbiome these days, right? So I think the understanding is, you know,
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if some people maybe just an LA, we're catching on to the colgate and the crests and the
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listerine and the bright blue and orange mouth washes are actually terrible for us. They're
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killing bacteria that are really the instigator of digestion, right? So is there a way outside
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of just simple practices? I'm guessing you recommend oral hygiene practices now in your appointments.
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Correct. I always ask you, when's the time you're seeing your dentist? Do you have any issues with
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parodontal disease? Because if you have gum disease, you very likely have haschlear disease because
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the inflammation your gums is transmitted through your cardiovascular system. But in our office,
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we have various vendors that require the nitrate-reducing test results. So, you know, it's like
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libous paper. You put it in your mouth and just liva, you know, soaks into a pad. You press the
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developer on it. And if it's white, your body's not making nitric oxide through your salivary pathway.
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If it's bright red, you are. So first, you always want to try to withdraw the defending agent. So
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if you're using antiseptic mouthwash, stop that. You know, if they're using a lot of products that
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have a lot of fluoride in it, stop that. If they're not eating anything with nitrates in it,
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you know, it's, you know, they're carnivore, for example. Then you're going to have to give them
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nitrates through that pathway. And there's various vendors that make different
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lozenges and such that can give the nitric oxide through that pathway. The second body was that I
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didn't mention was that you also need stomach acid for this to work. So if you're on a proton
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pump inhibitor, you're potending, you know, and acids all the time, if you don't stomach acid,
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you're not going to be able to make these chemical reactions happen. So, you know, look for somebody
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who knows how to kind of help with, you know, acid reflux, you know, not just taking pills to block
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the stomach acid. About a year and a half ago, I love that you brought that up that test strip.
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Do you do a doctor's section, Patel? I know them, yes. Yeah. So he gave me one to put on and
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sure enough, I was deficient in nitric oxide, which led me down that path. This is great in
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sight. Can people do a test? The enos enzyme? Is that a test that people can do? Not, not directly,
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but there's a lab called ABMA, asymmetric dimethoriginine. If that blood test is high,
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you'll often have low endotheliatric oxide synthase. Such good insight. And I'm owning in on these
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things because it's really pulling back the scope of what we think optimal hurt, sorry,
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it's really pulling back the scope of what we think optimal cardiovascular health should be.
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All right, so increasing exercise, optimizing our greens intake and lense dive into sunlight.
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The magic of circadian rhythm for our body, my introduction to this, especially for hard health,
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was through an ashram. I spent a lot of time growing up at an ashram and through yoga and
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understanding that different organs within the body have their own circadian rhythm. But now you're
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telling us so much more and you're doing it through a Western lens, which I appreciate,
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so much, talked to us about the power of sunlight for cardiovascular health.
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I mean, we're evolved under full spectrum sunlight and it's only been in the past 100 years or so
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that we've decided to live the majority of our lives inside under artificial lights.
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There's not a coincidence why all these chronic diseases are popped up in the 20th century.
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Diabetes, cancer, heart disease all got worse. You know, our food, yes, there's more,
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you know, industrial food, but our genetics have not changed as much as people suspect.
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It's our light environments have significantly changed. And our body is always trying to
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see what time it is. You know, there's two primary zykeibers. It's a German term for time giver.
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It's a light that enters your eyes and it's the timing that the nutrients are coming into your
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system. Now, the nutrition one, when patients come to see me, I usually only start with three
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questions. What time of day do you start eating and stop? How much protein are you eating?
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How much seafood are you eating? Then we'll dive into what their goals are with the biomarker
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show. But the food one I always leave with that is the time because food is not only energy,
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it's information, it's information of what season is it. You know, you should be eating food that's
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locally appropriate to your environment. And you should be ideally eating during late eating during
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daylight hours because when food is in the digestive system, the liver and gutter like daytime,
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let's do what we need to do. If you're eating one hour before bed and it's 11 p.m.,
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your body's like, well, they're probably going to still eat. So the liver and gut clocks are
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going to stay on for about four more hours. So now it's two, three a.m. in the morning before your
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liver and gut shut off. You don't metabolize food as well. Your temperature is hotter. You don't
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get to those deeper levels of sleep. So eat during daylight hours, I hope to believe or at least
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expect stop eating whatever you're eating three hours before you go to bed. So I always start with
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that. And then the light, it is a little more challenging, but you know, light has different
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frequencies, different colors. There's a receptor in the eye called melanopsis. It is not a vision
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receptor. It's not a photo receptor where you can see, but it is sensing different photonic energy
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that is in the blue spectrum of light. So when we go outside in the morning time, those blue
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photons of light hit the melanopsis receptor. Those good transmitted to the brain tells the brain
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to master clock the super-casmag nucleus. It's daytime. Start making more cortisol, start making
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your sex hormones get ready for the day. The sun looks different at noon time. It's 5,500
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Kelvin at noon time. Our devices are set at that exact same color temperature. So when we start
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these devices, our brain is always getting signal that's noon time. Well, right now we have this
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conversation. It's close to noon, not a big circuiting disruption. But if the sun has said
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and we're staring at this, your brain just got to hit that at noon time. Here's more cortisol.
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You need to be alert. You need to be hunting for food at this time. But in the evening, when the
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sun would set, normal blue photons of light would hit the thaw receptor. The body gets a signal.
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It must be going into evening time. And cortisol would start to drop. Melatonin, which is being
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produced during the day, finally is allowed to be released. The melatonin helps you stay asleep.
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The melatonin is one of the mastering antioxidants that basically helps the mitochondria, the
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engines in your body repair from any of the damage that happened during the day. And that's all
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yoked by the light signals. So I often tell patients, if you don't get your light right,
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you're not going to get your health right. Wow. We need to talk about food or exercise really.
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So we think about light. Okay, so photonic energy that we're receiving. And really
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the communication that's happening with our entire endocrine system. And even you tell that story
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of the light and our cortisol spike in for too long exhaust and that happens in the body.
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Like just hearing you talk about it, we can immediately understand the why we're stressed and tired.
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So I wonder why we're stressed and tired. We're constantly looking at these lights. We've so many
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things that are keeping us alert. God, I wish I had my my blue light classic. But there's a deep
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understanding because of the messengers and our body aren't communicating effectively. Then
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obviously your body can't send out the attention or the energy that it needs to take to make
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key organs function, right? Correct. So you mentioned time and light. They have the two things
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that you asked your clients about your patients about protein and seafood. Correct. So the seafood
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one is it's about how much DHA that they're getting in through their diet. The reason being is
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that up to 60% of your retina and 30% of your brain is made up of DHA. And the the quantum reason
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why you need DHA is that if your cell membranes are full of DHA, then when those lights, the sun
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hits your surfaces that have DHA, it acts like a kind of an insulated wire or basically captures
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that light energy and then transmits it to the neighboring cells. If you don't have enough DHA,
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it's kind of like having a half-charged iPhone or you know Android one if you use it.
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Yeah, it's going to work. Just not in peak capacity all day long. And then yeah, I'll stop there
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for a second. I didn't care about the protein part. No, it's just fascinating. One that you put
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a quantum reason around DHA. And ultimately like you're talking about things that come from nature
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that we essentially need to function at our prime at our best. And I think that we've lost that
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wisdom. And I'm going to say it again, just hearing a cardiologist, hearing a Western trained medical
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doctor shed this light over our health is just making me really, really happy right now. So yeah,
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we'll keep diving into that because obviously we have to go from here to mitochondria,
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but talk about protein first. Sure. And so protein is the building blocks for your muscles. Your
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muscles are your metabolic engines. And so yes, you may be physically active, but if you're not
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giving your body enough loosey, the amino acid that triggers muscle growth, you're going to potentially
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stall out over time. We're all going to be losing muscle mass as we age. We all develop some
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degree of sarcopenia. We're going to fight against it as much as possible. So if you need to do
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your strength training, you know, three times a week or so, and then you got to give your body
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enough protein to maintain that metabolism of the muscles. And you need at least 90 grams of protein
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today to be able to make that happen. If you're trying to add on muscle mass, it's going to be more
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in the neighborhood of a gram of protein for each pound of ideal body weight that you want to be at.
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So if you're trying to gain mass, you're going to have to really increase your protein intake.
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Something I've really been trying to crack the code on as you're speaking. I'm with you. Like I
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looked at all of the studies around protein intake and prevention around sarcopenia and all of those
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things, but I can't help but think back to our ancestors. So if I'm thinking about this, I'm
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having DNF Danish. The South Asian side of things now have a strong susceptibility to getting
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cardiovascular disease. It's known. But when I asked, you know, if it was an issue in the past,
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for our ancestors in India, it wasn't an issue, which begs the lens then, well, one, they weren't
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counting their protein grams every single day to the environment and the foods that they're eating
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right now. But also, maybe we weren't living longer, right? So this is kind of like the, maybe the
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investment that we need to take our ancestors might not have been doing it, but we're also taking
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on so much more of an assault from our environment that we're looking at things like protein intake,
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like light that we just need out of essential to living in today's modern world.
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Well, to make it a little even a little bit easier is that we've kind of touched the edges on
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nutrition. Yeah, I will talk nutrition with patients, but I'm going to start with like, I need to
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know what kind of mitochondria you got. What kind of engine you got? Because that's going to
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determine what fuel we're going to talk about. But breaking it down, if you're reading real food,
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photosynthesis has to touch that food. Yes. The sunlight grows the food. Your mitochondria's
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job is to reverse the sunlight back into a different form of energy. And two, three hundred years ago,
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we did not live indoors. We would be eating foods that are appropriate to the environment you're in.
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You trapped your food where the food was going and you ate it. I'm in St. Louis, Missouri right now.
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The ground is frozen. There are not fruits growing in St. Louis this time of year.
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So my ancestors would not have been optimized to eat bananas in St. Louis in January and St. Louis.
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They would have been more animal-based products this time of year. If you're in India and there
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is tons of vegetables and fruits because you're at a lower latitude, your bodies optimized to eat it.
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So if you take your people and put them at a northern latitude where the foods are going,
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there's a mismatch in their circadian biology and their kind of mitochondrial sense of like,
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I'm supposed to be more close to the equator. My people have now been more north.
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My engine's not going to work as well up north. So that's what the challenges is that
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we have a kind of a food war sometimes for people. And it's really simple thing. It's like
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food is stored up sunlight. You just got to figure out like how to decode that information.
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And in the old days, we would have been living outside getting the sun directly on our surfaces.
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We would have been connected to the earth. Those are the two main ways that you get electrons
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other than you're eating those electrons and food stuff. We would have been eating seasonally
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just out of necessity. I love a big believer. And even from the Ayurvedic lens, like foods that
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are grown at different times of year, also contain intelligence, whether it's the type of fiber,
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the fat, or even the bacteria that grow on them to support our immune system, right? So I think
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that's something that we really need to own in on. And maybe for listeners because I,
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oh, the die wars had to get me. And like, look, you being vegetarian could work for you for part
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of the year. You go and kill you for the second part of the year could be magic. But we certainly
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have to end the war around which one is bad. We're considering we are all so by and we're also
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bio individual. So thank you for that reflection. I also agree. mitochondria obviously is becoming
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a buzzword. I really think that this is a science that is going to kind of explode. As we gain all
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this information, it's really the mitochondria are the source of light within our body. And from what
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I'm reading and studying about the more optimized or mitochondria, the more optimal our health,
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the more optimized or mitochondria, the more our organs can function better because especially
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around, I'm sure you'll share more, the concentration around mitochondria around the heart, the brain,
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our ovaries. Hey guys, also, yeah, it's also a little bit more, you know, when we're thinking about
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optimizing our mitochondria, we've talked about sunlight, we've talked about the right foods,
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we've talked about the energy information that we get from the foods, but optimizing our mitochondria
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for the lens of our heart. No, it's such a critically important topic that behind me is a giant
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mitochondria on the wall. So when the patient sits there, I'm looking right at the mitochondria.
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They help the mitochondria, you know, are so important that without good mitochondria,
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you're not going to live a long healthy life. So going back in time, you only inherit your mitochondria
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from your mother. So your mother is the one that passes them down to you. So that's what I start with
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when I take a family history with somebody like how healthy is your mom? How healthy is your
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grandma from that side? At the very healthy living in their 80s to 90s without a lot of chronic diseases,
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that's your potential life. They gave you your engines. If your mom had breast cancer at 40 years old,
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when you're born, you're, you may be 20 years old on the inside as a baby. And so by 10 year 40,
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you're actually 60 years old and you're getting diseases of aging. So it always starts with
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how healthy was your mother because that's your potential life. Again,
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epigenetically, you might live completely different than your mom, but if she gave you bad
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engines, you're going to have to do more. Then you have to think about the engines as you talk about
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we are literally beings of light. The mitochondria make bio photons. They also make infrared light
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heat. So the inputs of mitochondria are not carbs and fats. Those compounds also may become
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protons and electrons. The mitochondria through evolution made it where out the other end of
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the mitochondria becomes ATP, which is something that helps with energy by helping with water. I'd
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pick it into different proteins. The mitochondria also produce carbon dioxide. You breathe that out.
386
00:33:07.040 --> 00:33:11.920
The plants grab the carbon dioxide, make us food. It's a nice cycle. And then mitochondria
387
00:33:11.920 --> 00:33:17.200
make water. The water is extremely important. It's more important than the water you drink. That water
388
00:33:17.200 --> 00:33:22.960
is another form of energy. When the light sources hit our surfaces, that water traps that energy.
389
00:33:22.960 --> 00:33:29.360
And we literally make a battery out of it. This is coherent domains or structured water or easy
390
00:33:29.360 --> 00:33:35.760
water. Those are all synonyms. Those are extremely important energy sources. And then our
391
00:33:35.760 --> 00:33:41.200
mitochondria also make infrared heat. That infrared heat basically helps charge up that water a
392
00:33:41.200 --> 00:33:46.480
little bit more. But it also makes the mitochondria, you know, who I should back it up a little bit.
393
00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:51.360
When I was talking really about people at the equator, people at the equator have generally what's
394
00:33:51.360 --> 00:33:57.600
known as coupled mitochondria. They're mitochondria are very efficient at making energy. This is why
395
00:33:57.600 --> 00:34:01.840
the Kenyans went every long distance race because the foods that they put into their engines
396
00:34:01.840 --> 00:34:07.920
becomes almost 100% efficient at energy. When people moved out of the equator, moved further north,
397
00:34:08.720 --> 00:34:12.000
their skin became lighter, the eyes became lighter because the sun was becoming weaker.
398
00:34:12.960 --> 00:34:18.400
The ground would start to freeze. If you don't have heat, you freeze. So the mitochondria became
399
00:34:18.400 --> 00:34:24.480
less efficient at making energy and they uncouple. So think of like the little proteins inside them,
400
00:34:24.480 --> 00:34:28.400
they stretch a part a little bit and it's like a radiator. Some heat escapes. That kept the
401
00:34:28.400 --> 00:34:34.880
person from freezing to that. So food is, you know, not going to be perfectly metabolized energy.
402
00:34:34.880 --> 00:34:40.720
So somebody in northern European latitude heritage is probably not going to be the best world
403
00:34:40.720 --> 00:34:44.320
long-distance runner. They're not as efficient as somebody who has highly coupled mitochondria.
404
00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:50.000
That's a little bit of a tangent. But the case is that the mitochondria are the stories. You take
405
00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:53.840
your mitochondria engines, you put them into the world where you're at and you try to figure out how
406
00:34:53.840 --> 00:35:02.480
do you optimize how they can make ATP, water, carbon dioxide and infrared light. Fascinating. Thank
407
00:35:02.560 --> 00:35:08.080
you for making that so tangible. And for the aha, our mitochondria come from our mothers.
408
00:35:09.200 --> 00:35:14.880
Which for me, I'm alone with autoimmune disease, like it's just, it's so much a part of my journey.
409
00:35:14.880 --> 00:35:19.280
So this is such great insight and also explains why I'm not a speed runner.
410
00:35:21.680 --> 00:35:27.360
With my Eastern European side. So you brought up something around, you know, with mitochondria.
411
00:35:28.000 --> 00:35:33.600
I love that you have now 30 minutes into this podcast. You related our cardiovascular health,
412
00:35:33.600 --> 00:35:40.480
the help of our mitochondria and to the water, the sun, our light and the soil. So everything that
413
00:35:40.480 --> 00:35:47.840
comes from nature, which I think holds a lot of wisdom in a world where we become so reactive.
414
00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:54.160
You know, we go to a cardiovascular doctor and it's all about prevention or going on medication
415
00:35:54.240 --> 00:35:58.960
without getting to the foundation of the body first, which is what you're talking about.
416
00:35:59.760 --> 00:36:04.480
And when I think back, I mentioned to you, when I reached out, I had, I've had to hurt surgeries
417
00:36:04.480 --> 00:36:09.840
for atrial tachycardia, probably around six ablations during those two surgeries.
418
00:36:10.560 --> 00:36:20.320
But I wish doctors back then asked questions around my energy, my consumption, my circadian rhythm
419
00:36:20.400 --> 00:36:25.280
and everything that was happening then in my 20s, right, as well as my emotional health.
420
00:36:25.280 --> 00:36:29.440
But instead, they hop me on a, to do a stress test with a, which I think,
421
00:36:30.160 --> 00:36:34.720
the part of the population can pass easily. And they just wanted to know how much I was eating
422
00:36:34.720 --> 00:36:39.680
out at McDonald's or smoke cigarettes. And that's about it. And then sure enough,
423
00:36:39.680 --> 00:36:45.280
inevitably, I ended up saying no to doing an evaluation because there was a risk of me wearing
424
00:36:45.360 --> 00:36:50.240
a pacemaker. But looking back at that time, there was other symptoms that were happening
425
00:36:50.240 --> 00:36:56.320
in my body. One that was weakened, I had PCOS. I became completely ill of the arjake.
426
00:36:56.320 --> 00:37:00.960
I was on a prescription medication, which I know also could impact her mitochondria,
427
00:37:00.960 --> 00:37:06.320
as well as my digestive health and so much more. But thinking back to his surgery, like that,
428
00:37:07.040 --> 00:37:12.320
the discussion that was had back then, let's say 20 years ago versus what you know now, like I know,
429
00:37:13.200 --> 00:37:18.480
ablutions are pretty common surgery. And I get reached out to once a week, at least,
430
00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:25.280
with somebody who suffers from palpitations. And nobody ever back then attributed that to,
431
00:37:25.280 --> 00:37:29.440
you know, my anxiety or my environment or my mitochondria. So can you talk a bit about it?
432
00:37:30.560 --> 00:37:35.040
So arrhythmias are just when your heart is beating out of balance. So
433
00:37:35.600 --> 00:37:40.880
the body has a natural pacemaker called the sinus node. It's in the top chamber called the
434
00:37:40.880 --> 00:37:45.600
atrial on the right side. So the sinus node fires and it's kind of like dropping a pebble
435
00:37:45.600 --> 00:37:51.200
in the water. The electricity ripples out. It goes downstream and it hits what's known as a
436
00:37:51.200 --> 00:37:56.080
relay switch called the atrial retricular node or 80 node for sure. And that sends the message
437
00:37:56.080 --> 00:37:59.600
down to the bottom chambers called the ventricles and then your bottom chambers fire.
438
00:38:00.400 --> 00:38:05.360
When patients have palpitations, it can be due to either abnormal beats come from the top atrial
439
00:38:05.440 --> 00:38:09.120
work and becoming from the ventricles. The atrial tend to be more common.
440
00:38:10.160 --> 00:38:15.440
In your case, if you're having atrial tachycardias, which is a super ventricular tachycardia,
441
00:38:15.440 --> 00:38:19.600
so the ventricles, the bottom chamber, super just means above the ventricle, the top chamber
442
00:38:19.600 --> 00:38:24.320
just starts firing off very rapidly on its own. The natural pacemaker is not firing.
443
00:38:24.960 --> 00:38:29.920
And so in some people, there is a congenital abnormality. Basically, I have an extra wire
444
00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:35.200
in their system that just keeps firing off. Sometimes, you know, you can try to look for
445
00:38:35.200 --> 00:38:38.880
y'all can make sure they're not, no, thyroid's not overactive that, you know, they don't,
446
00:38:38.880 --> 00:38:42.880
you know, they're not using nicotine or cocaine or something that's going to stimulate
447
00:38:42.880 --> 00:38:48.240
the system. But if they're not doing those things, then often they would recommend either a beta
448
00:38:48.240 --> 00:38:54.000
blocker or a calcium channel blocker, which slows down the atrial ventricular conduction. So the
449
00:38:54.000 --> 00:38:58.480
message from the top chamber slows down getting to the bottom chamber. And some people, that's enough
450
00:38:59.200 --> 00:39:02.960
to cause them not to have their symptoms anymore. But anything they put in your system, risk
451
00:39:02.960 --> 00:39:07.520
benefit or potential side effects. Sometimes, these medications make people more fatigued and they
452
00:39:07.520 --> 00:39:12.160
really don't like being on the medications. In that case, if they can't tolerate the meds,
453
00:39:12.160 --> 00:39:17.200
or they're just very symptomatic from the kind of the rapid heartbeats, then ablations can be
454
00:39:17.200 --> 00:39:23.360
considered. When it's a super ventricular tachycardia, generally, ablations are generally successful
455
00:39:23.440 --> 00:39:29.440
one in dawns. It is a procedure. There's always a risk. It depends where their rhythm is coming from.
456
00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:33.200
And in some cases, if the rhythm is coming very close to that atrial ventricular node,
457
00:39:33.840 --> 00:39:38.320
during an ablation, they're using either cooling or heating instruments, basically,
458
00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:44.560
to snip the wires. It's a fail, kind of the non-medical way to say that. But if the wires too close to
459
00:39:44.560 --> 00:39:50.000
your kind of ventricular node, and it gets damaged, then your bodies can, or they damage your
460
00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.560
sinus node in the process, then they're going to have to consider putting a permanent pacemaker in
461
00:39:54.560 --> 00:39:58.800
to take over the work for your body, because the wiring system has now really been damaged in your
462
00:39:58.800 --> 00:40:04.480
system. There's also ablations for atrial fibrillation. Atrial fibrillation tends to be an older
463
00:40:04.480 --> 00:40:08.160
population that has it, and those ablations are a little bit more complicated. They come with a
464
00:40:08.160 --> 00:40:13.280
lot more risk based off of where they're trying to fix those from. But for younger people, it's
465
00:40:13.280 --> 00:40:16.880
generally going to be super ventricular tachycardia when people are talking about ablations.
466
00:40:17.760 --> 00:40:21.360
Such a great way to describe it. Yeah, I always described as burning off this
467
00:40:21.360 --> 00:40:27.600
extra electrical node around my heart as they did. And it's funny, I feel like I've kind of
468
00:40:28.320 --> 00:40:33.200
cured myself in a way, but I also had the ablation. So, you know, I'll never know how much of
469
00:40:33.200 --> 00:40:37.840
each world I need it. So I'm very mindful for people who reach out whether they're on a bleak
470
00:40:37.840 --> 00:40:42.480
bite blocker or considering a beta blocker. For me, it just wasn't right for me. It was a bad
471
00:40:42.480 --> 00:40:48.240
situation that caused me to gain 45 pounds and I became completely lethargic. And in my 20s,
472
00:40:48.240 --> 00:40:53.680
I stopped living my life. So I think further investigation, especially taking into consideration
473
00:40:53.680 --> 00:40:58.400
the tips that you've mentioned today, are so key and so essential. So thank you for that.
474
00:40:59.280 --> 00:41:03.520
Let's talk about blood pressure. So a lot of people, this is the first time that they
475
00:41:04.320 --> 00:41:09.360
is the first thing that we check when we eat good or doctors. But when we think about any signs
476
00:41:09.440 --> 00:41:15.120
that people should be keeping an eye out for as we age. So high blood pressure or hypertension,
477
00:41:15.120 --> 00:41:19.520
it's the number one risk factor for cardiovascular disease. And the greatest majority times,
478
00:41:19.520 --> 00:41:23.760
it's asymptomatic. You know, it's very rare that people have blood pressure. So high that
479
00:41:23.760 --> 00:41:30.640
they're having vision changes or headaches. So it's the silent killer. So a normal blood pressure
480
00:41:30.640 --> 00:41:36.080
is 120 over 80 millimeters mercury forever. The only reason you would not want to push people
481
00:41:36.080 --> 00:41:40.240
that low is that if they're older and you're lowering that blood pressure enough that they're not
482
00:41:40.240 --> 00:41:44.320
profusing the brain as much. And they start getting a lot of lightheadedness or busyness hurt.
483
00:41:44.320 --> 00:41:48.400
The person's very at risk of falling. Then maybe back off on those targets. But if you're
484
00:41:48.400 --> 00:41:54.080
relatively young person, the risk of disease in your cardiovascular system really starts to increase
485
00:41:54.080 --> 00:41:59.760
when your blood pressure is greater than 115 over 75. So for every one point on the systolic
486
00:41:59.920 --> 00:42:05.520
top number that your blood pressure is. So example, normal optimal is 115 in your blood pressure is
487
00:42:06.240 --> 00:42:11.760
135, which people say, oh, this is a little bit. It's actually a 20% relative increase risk of
488
00:42:11.760 --> 00:42:20.240
a stroke. That's not insignificant. So optimal 115 75. If people are on medications, the goal is 120
489
00:42:20.240 --> 00:42:27.760
over 80. But to back up, blood pressure is often not taken correctly. You know, people are taking it,
490
00:42:27.760 --> 00:42:31.040
you know, right when they come in from the parking lot, they sit down, they're talking,
491
00:42:31.040 --> 00:42:35.680
they're still holding their coffees. You know, they need to sit down, be
492
00:42:35.680 --> 00:42:41.120
ideally for five minutes, your back has to be so ported, your feet has to be on the ground,
493
00:42:41.120 --> 00:42:46.320
your arm has to be at heart level. And they have to use a blood pressure cuff that appropriately
494
00:42:46.320 --> 00:42:50.640
fits on the bicep. If the blood pressure cuffs too big or too small, you're going to get falsely
495
00:42:50.640 --> 00:42:57.920
abnormal recordings. And I would not be remiss to say that like, you need to have it on
496
00:42:57.920 --> 00:43:01.920
bare skin. So every time I go to someone else and they're checking my blood pressure, like,
497
00:43:01.920 --> 00:43:05.440
oh, just put it over here, I'm like, you don't understand. I'm a cardiologist who's very specific.
498
00:43:05.440 --> 00:43:08.880
Like, I'm taking the shirt off, put it on the bicep, get a real blood pressure.
499
00:43:09.680 --> 00:43:14.240
Such good insight. And do you recommend that people keep blood pressure cuffs at home?
500
00:43:14.240 --> 00:43:16.640
Is it something that's a, you know, we're into wearables.
501
00:43:17.120 --> 00:43:21.520
Sure, sure. And it's, it is one of the cases where I don't want people to hypervokes on it.
502
00:43:21.520 --> 00:43:24.960
And if you don't have an issue with blood pressure, I think it's worthwhile to, you know,
503
00:43:24.960 --> 00:43:29.280
if you are going to your doctor or other healthcare providers and they're keep telling you,
504
00:43:29.280 --> 00:43:32.960
like, your blood pressure is a little bit high, then it's always a good idea to start checking
505
00:43:32.960 --> 00:43:36.800
at home because your home blood pressure on average is a much better tell of what's going on
506
00:43:36.800 --> 00:43:41.840
in your cardiovascular system than a one off in the doctor's office. But if you're at home,
507
00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:47.200
you do want to have a cuff that, you know, is kind of, I don't say FDA approved,
508
00:43:47.200 --> 00:43:50.400
but it should be a quality cuff. There's a lot of stuff on Amazon.
509
00:43:50.400 --> 00:43:54.160
You can buy it. That is honestly really junk. And you may not be getting the right results.
510
00:43:54.720 --> 00:43:58.800
You really, for the most part, want to avoid anything that's like wrist mounted for blood pressure.
511
00:43:59.600 --> 00:44:03.920
Yeah, I bought a few of the toys. I come toys on Amazon. Some of them are slightly accurate
512
00:44:03.920 --> 00:44:08.480
for your blood pressure. But most of the risk-based ones are not yet. There is one going to come out
513
00:44:08.480 --> 00:44:13.520
in 2025. It's already available in Europe. It's called the ECCA band. It'll be
514
00:44:13.520 --> 00:44:17.840
wearable by the size of like a root band. And it will do 24 blood pressure monitoring.
515
00:44:17.840 --> 00:44:20.400
So it's really going to be a game-chainter where people will have blood pressure.
516
00:44:20.400 --> 00:44:23.280
It's because you're going to be able to know that your blood pressure is just high in the morning.
517
00:44:23.280 --> 00:44:27.920
Of course, before bed. And ideally, you want to see your blood pressure dropping while you sleep.
518
00:44:27.920 --> 00:44:31.600
Your blood pressure not dropping while you sleep, that's a really big tell that, you know,
519
00:44:31.600 --> 00:44:35.040
maybe have sleep apnea or that there's some stress hormones going on that's keeping your blood
520
00:44:35.040 --> 00:44:39.200
up at your high when your body's supposed to be recovering at night. Yeah, you're not restoring.
521
00:44:39.200 --> 00:44:44.960
Okay, so blood pressure cuff over your bicep, bare skin, instead of those cheap flimsy ones that go
522
00:44:44.960 --> 00:44:49.680
over your wrist, always holding up towards your heart. So feel free to correct the nerves
523
00:44:49.680 --> 00:44:54.720
you check soon as next time. You're now getting tired. Right. Now the other aspect, you know,
524
00:44:54.720 --> 00:44:59.920
we're going to talk about wearables. I know you talk about cardiovascular risk and metabolic
525
00:45:00.800 --> 00:45:05.520
and to really go hand in hand. And again, I'm going to keep looking back at all these instances
526
00:45:05.520 --> 00:45:13.040
around my heart health when things were at their worst. I was on the Atkins diet and not because
527
00:45:13.040 --> 00:45:18.640
I was into dieting at all, but I just I noticed the correlation with my heart palpitations and
528
00:45:18.640 --> 00:45:24.320
my glucose spikes from having things like white bread or sandwiches or potatoes and stuff like
529
00:45:24.400 --> 00:45:30.160
that. So can you talk about that correlation between glucose and palpitations or even
530
00:45:30.160 --> 00:45:34.160
metabolic health and the risk of cardiovascular disorders on the rest? Well, for sure,
531
00:45:34.160 --> 00:45:38.720
you know, cardiovascular health. It's, it's, you know, very much, you know, those were these days,
532
00:45:38.720 --> 00:45:43.200
but it really comes down to that health of that glyco-calax, that protective gel coat in your
533
00:45:43.200 --> 00:45:49.680
lining arteries. It's earlier mentioned PCOS. PCOS is insulin resistance. High insulin,
534
00:45:49.760 --> 00:45:54.880
high glucose. Those are two of the biggest things that damaged the glyco-calax. If you damage
535
00:45:54.880 --> 00:46:00.160
a gel coat, you're opening up the doors to developing high blood pressure, pathoscrosis.
536
00:46:00.720 --> 00:46:06.400
So metabolic health is intimately tied to cardiovascular health. Now, you know, one thing I did
537
00:46:06.400 --> 00:46:09.760
mention was that we were talking about blue light and affecting your kind of stress hormones,
538
00:46:09.760 --> 00:46:14.800
but just getting the wrong timing of blue light into your eyes is going to raise your blood sugar.
539
00:46:14.880 --> 00:46:20.160
You can beat seconds, get no carbohydrates, and still be diabetic because you're using
540
00:46:20.160 --> 00:46:25.520
technology at the wrong times of day. When that light comes in the eyes and it raises ACTH,
541
00:46:25.520 --> 00:46:29.680
that's going to raise cortisol. Cortisol is going to tell your liver pump out more glucose.
542
00:46:29.680 --> 00:46:34.480
So just pounding blue light all day long can raise your blood sugar. I think about that every
543
00:46:34.480 --> 00:46:40.960
morning when I check my stats for my horror ring. It's an addiction, but such great insight,
544
00:46:41.040 --> 00:46:47.040
because when we think about cardiometabolic factors, you know, no one's really finding the
545
00:46:47.040 --> 00:46:52.400
interconnectivity. Like, we're not connecting the dots on how our body is systemic. It works
546
00:46:52.400 --> 00:46:57.840
as a system and how something like your metabolic health could influence or maybe be a predictor
547
00:46:57.840 --> 00:47:02.560
of whether or not you are at risk for cardiovascular disease. Do you have your patients
548
00:47:02.560 --> 00:47:07.680
where a glucose monitor? At times, I will. Yeah, particularly for the ones that are kind of more
549
00:47:07.760 --> 00:47:11.760
the biohackers, you're just like really want to know like, okay, what are my trigger foods?
550
00:47:11.760 --> 00:47:15.760
Oftentimes people eventually figure out what their trigger foods are, but they're usually more
551
00:47:15.760 --> 00:47:21.280
despised by like when they short sleep themselves, or they're under a lot more mental stress,
552
00:47:21.280 --> 00:47:25.920
or they're getting more blue light, you know, than they expect. The blood sugars are higher than
553
00:47:25.920 --> 00:47:30.560
they want to be, you know, or they're just not matching enough protein at their last meals and
554
00:47:30.560 --> 00:47:34.160
they're having these kind of real fluctuations in the glucose. So I think it is illuminating for
555
00:47:34.240 --> 00:47:39.520
many people, but then I also have other people that it's paralyzing to them to see their blood sugar
556
00:47:39.520 --> 00:47:44.080
not be perfect. And so I was like, the stress is probably raising blood sugar more, so I picked the
557
00:47:44.080 --> 00:47:49.200
thing off. Yeah, I'm so curious. I mean, it's definitely a marker that I'm interested in looking
558
00:47:49.200 --> 00:47:54.640
at for my clients. I would say especially in the past year, a lot of the clients that I worked with
559
00:47:54.640 --> 00:47:59.920
who have issues with lots of spikes and dips when I'm looking at something like a
560
00:47:59.920 --> 00:48:07.920
levels glucose monitor that's, these are people who are fit. They look fairly slim on the outside
561
00:48:07.920 --> 00:48:14.160
and they're athletic, but they're also very atyped and they're on their screens for multiple hours
562
00:48:14.160 --> 00:48:18.960
a day. So I think that that correlation is actually really strong. It's not just about the physical
563
00:48:18.960 --> 00:48:24.560
body. Correct. And they can also be skinny fat. I mean, they can have visceral fat that's driving
564
00:48:24.640 --> 00:48:29.520
inflammation on from the inside and they still look very fit on the outside. Okay, so you mentioned
565
00:48:29.520 --> 00:48:33.680
like, okay, Lex, then how do we optimize our glyco-calix?
566
00:48:35.440 --> 00:48:40.000
The fun. We start with stop doing things that damage it. So if you're in some resistance,
567
00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.880
you need to fix the in some resistance. You know, if you are not making sufficient hydroxide,
568
00:48:45.440 --> 00:48:50.480
promote things that boost nitric oxide, blood pressure honestly is a good tell for it. If your
569
00:48:50.480 --> 00:48:55.040
blood pressure is not optimal, you probably have some degree of glyco-calix dysfunction. So they
570
00:48:55.040 --> 00:48:59.920
just do the blood work that we talked about earlier. There are some specialized testing and get done,
571
00:48:59.920 --> 00:49:04.480
you know, I do it in my office, which looks at arterial elasticity, how stiff the arteries are,
572
00:49:04.480 --> 00:49:08.960
how much nitric oxide the arteries can release. And then we do the compensable, we say, oh,
573
00:49:09.520 --> 00:49:13.920
you have very high uric acid levels. Let's work on getting a uric acid low or you have very high
574
00:49:13.920 --> 00:49:18.720
ADMA levels or high home assisting. Figure out what the group calls is and then dialing that back.
575
00:49:19.600 --> 00:49:25.280
So all the same functions like looking at the basic foundation of your body first to help optimize
576
00:49:25.280 --> 00:49:31.040
everything else. What would you say then today are, you know, the key risk factors for the people
577
00:49:31.040 --> 00:49:35.280
that you're seeing in your office? The things that you can kind of connect the dots that are
578
00:49:35.280 --> 00:49:39.280
happening in a modern world that are the biggest culprits. What are they?
579
00:49:40.480 --> 00:49:45.440
So I have a talk about four pillars of health. There's going to be nutrition, exercise,
580
00:49:45.440 --> 00:49:48.000
which most people have some idea of what they should be doing. They may not
581
00:49:48.640 --> 00:49:52.720
budget the time for it or have access to doing it all the time, but they generally know what they
582
00:49:52.720 --> 00:49:58.400
should be doing. But not everybody's very good at managing their stress and stress isn't the problem.
583
00:49:58.400 --> 00:50:02.560
It's kind of the issue when you're kind of stuck more in these high sympathetic tones for long
584
00:50:02.560 --> 00:50:06.960
periods of time. The arteries are going to be clamped down, which is going to raise your blood pressure,
585
00:50:06.960 --> 00:50:12.640
cortisol levels will be high raising your blood sugar. So, you know, the wearables, you know,
586
00:50:12.640 --> 00:50:17.120
track heart rate variability. So that's how much stress your body sensing right at that moment.
587
00:50:18.560 --> 00:50:22.720
Often like, you know, you talk about your meditations outstanding to kind of balanced out that
588
00:50:22.720 --> 00:50:27.680
nervous system, thought number nervous system. You know, there's things such as heart math,
589
00:50:27.680 --> 00:50:32.800
which is biofeedback. There's now the other wearables that, you know, vibrate at different frequencies,
590
00:50:32.800 --> 00:50:38.640
that kind of calm down the vagal tone. So dealing with stress is a dream point. You know,
591
00:50:38.640 --> 00:50:43.520
the type A personalities, it's great. It allows them to accomplish much, but they often age faster
592
00:50:43.520 --> 00:50:48.000
because of that. They're burning the candles at both ends. And then the fourth pillar, and it's
593
00:50:48.000 --> 00:50:53.360
the most important, it's sleep. It's not the most sexy topic, but it is so critical for optimizing
594
00:50:53.360 --> 00:50:58.880
your health and longevity. If you do not sleep well, you will not age well. And so I always start
595
00:50:58.880 --> 00:51:02.320
back with the circadian biology. If you don't get the circadian biology right, it's really hard to
596
00:51:02.320 --> 00:51:07.440
sleep off. It's resting recovery, right? You know, I always talk about this wisdom of our body.
597
00:51:08.320 --> 00:51:12.560
Our heart has been beating for us before we even arrived in this planet, right? In the amount
598
00:51:12.560 --> 00:51:17.280
of energy we don't give any thought to it, it pumps for us every single day, and yet most of us
599
00:51:17.280 --> 00:51:23.920
aren't giving our bodies the rest that it needs to restore. And HRV is something that I think
600
00:51:23.920 --> 00:51:27.920
is very important to watch. And I know that it's supposed to be different for everyone.
601
00:51:28.880 --> 00:51:36.480
When we think about optimal HRV and our body's ability to restore, would you say that somebody
602
00:51:36.480 --> 00:51:42.480
tracking this if they're seeing their heart rate variability consistently go down? Is this a sign
603
00:51:42.480 --> 00:51:49.120
like goes to your cardiologist? Possibly. It just also means that your body's, you know, facing
604
00:51:49.120 --> 00:51:54.560
something, you may be getting a virus or, you know, you're starting to over train, or you ate a
605
00:51:54.560 --> 00:51:58.320
really late meal, and you just have lower heart rate variability. It's more than kind of the
606
00:51:58.320 --> 00:52:02.000
overnight heart rate ability and the first thing in the morning is the most important.
607
00:52:03.200 --> 00:52:09.040
A quick caveat is that the majority of the wearables that are either ring or kind of wrist-based,
608
00:52:09.040 --> 00:52:12.720
they're not actually measuring heart rate variability. They're looking at pulse wave velocity
609
00:52:12.720 --> 00:52:17.520
and kind of estimating what your HRV would be. So if you don't get numbers on your trackers and it
610
00:52:17.520 --> 00:52:21.600
doesn't make sense to you, then you really got to use kind of the gold standard and actually use
611
00:52:21.760 --> 00:52:26.240
a chest strap. There's various vendors that make the chest strap. I have no affiliations with
612
00:52:26.240 --> 00:52:31.840
any of them, but you know, the polar, the frontier, and the Morpheus, those are the three big ones that
613
00:52:31.840 --> 00:52:36.480
I personally have and also most of my patients use, and most of them help with their own software that
614
00:52:36.480 --> 00:52:41.120
tracks it. You know, you want to compare your heart rate variability to yourself. Not necessarily
615
00:52:41.120 --> 00:52:45.360
your peers because the technologies that they're using a different, you know, they're using a ring
616
00:52:45.360 --> 00:52:49.200
and using a chest strap, they're going to be completely different numbers. You want to get to
617
00:52:49.200 --> 00:52:52.720
your baseline. So you want to record data for at least seven days before you even start really
618
00:52:52.720 --> 00:52:57.680
looking at it and then start trying to spot trends because you'll generally start seeing that,
619
00:52:57.680 --> 00:53:01.840
you know, if you're starting to get sick, your heart rate variability will change 24 or 48 hours
620
00:53:01.840 --> 00:53:07.200
before you start noticing your first symptoms. Right. Such a great call out and ring to note also
621
00:53:07.200 --> 00:53:12.640
because I think we have so much control to these wearables. It's funny for me on my or ring,
622
00:53:12.800 --> 00:53:19.280
zero affiliation with this brand at all. But it will often show that I had a stressful day,
623
00:53:19.840 --> 00:53:25.040
two hours in stress or three hours in stress when I have the most relaxing day. I teach yoga and
624
00:53:25.040 --> 00:53:31.680
meditation. I talk about food every day, but you mentioned pulse rate velocity. Could this be why,
625
00:53:31.680 --> 00:53:36.320
like I know, is still on occasion, do you get palpitations? They're very mild and very subtle. Could
626
00:53:36.320 --> 00:53:43.360
this be why? Possibly. I love the devices for certain parts, but other parts, you know,
627
00:53:43.360 --> 00:53:48.000
particularly these ones that are using like the lights to pick up things. Sometimes at certain
628
00:53:48.000 --> 00:53:53.680
heart rates, it sort of gets blinded. It doesn't really pick it up not well. So if the data doesn't
629
00:53:53.680 --> 00:53:58.720
make sense to you, for the most part, throw it out and use some other different measuring technique.
630
00:53:58.720 --> 00:54:04.000
Well, because I've, you know, I could serve myself a pretty decent biohacker. And I've had
631
00:54:04.000 --> 00:54:08.160
many of the different wearables. And sometimes you know, you know, the biohacker has four things
632
00:54:08.160 --> 00:54:14.480
on at once. And the amount of discordant information was concerning because some of the watches
633
00:54:14.480 --> 00:54:18.560
say, like, oh, you're sleeping real well. The ring would be like, yeah, it wasn't so good. So
634
00:54:18.560 --> 00:54:25.040
pick whatever device that you're comfortable with. But a quick caveat is that otherwise, you know,
635
00:54:25.040 --> 00:54:29.680
this ring, this ring is always an airplane mode. I don't wear anything electronic on my body.
636
00:54:29.680 --> 00:54:34.400
My phone is not my body. My watch is not, you know, pinging me with, you know, notifications all
637
00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:42.960
day long. When you're getting those kind of non-native EMFs, those are stressors to the mitochondria.
638
00:54:42.960 --> 00:54:48.880
That they open up with the voltage gated calcium channels that causes all this oxidative stress
639
00:54:48.880 --> 00:54:53.360
in the system. So you're mitochondria trying to basically sense what's going on in the environment.
640
00:54:54.000 --> 00:54:57.920
If you have a bunch of wearables on and your body's getting pinged with all this EMF,
641
00:54:57.920 --> 00:55:00.720
the mitochondria kind of getting radar jammed at that point.
642
00:55:01.280 --> 00:55:06.960
Where were you in my 20s? I don't know this then, but I've known for at least 10 years.
643
00:55:06.960 --> 00:55:13.920
Exactly. It's just so relevant. And so the data also is what's making me stress. So that's such great
644
00:55:13.920 --> 00:55:18.800
insight. And I really do think, you know, in the past few minutes, you've talked about EMF,
645
00:55:18.800 --> 00:55:25.200
our level of exposure to EMF today is insane. I also have two Teslas, which I'm really concerned
646
00:55:25.200 --> 00:55:31.280
about. And at home, you know, I'm really focused on things that block EMF for myself. It for our
647
00:55:31.280 --> 00:55:37.520
kids and on our devices and stuff like that. But I'm fascinated around the fact that our heart
648
00:55:38.240 --> 00:55:44.640
is an electrical organ. It's founded on electricity. And you mentioned frequency. And you mentioned
649
00:55:44.640 --> 00:55:51.200
vagal tone. And you mentioned heart math. So here we are now. And I just I love the understanding
650
00:55:51.200 --> 00:55:56.080
that I have around the wisdom of my heart now, looking back at my surgeries and the things that
651
00:55:56.080 --> 00:56:02.240
I felt then. But now understanding like, Oh, you were really stressed. You were exposed to a lot.
652
00:56:02.240 --> 00:56:06.320
My body was going through a lot. You were depleted. You didn't have the light, the minerals,
653
00:56:06.320 --> 00:56:12.000
the nutrients that you needed to function or you had sadness also, which we know impacts our frequency.
654
00:56:12.720 --> 00:56:16.640
I can imagine you can't use words like vibration and frequency with all the patients that walk
655
00:56:16.640 --> 00:56:22.880
through your door, but you're aware of it. You know, is this something that we can consider for
656
00:56:22.880 --> 00:56:27.920
preventing cardiovascular disease maybe as a fifth bucket when we think about nutrition and exercise
657
00:56:27.920 --> 00:56:34.400
stress and sleep? I think so. I mean, the interesting thing is that, you know, I've obviously looked
658
00:56:34.400 --> 00:56:40.160
at thousands of EKGs in my life. And I never once thought about like, what makes this electricity?
659
00:56:40.160 --> 00:56:47.680
Why is this here? It's the mitochondria doing that. And your heart cells have nearly 3000 to 5000
660
00:56:47.680 --> 00:56:53.840
mitochondria per heart cell. They're very energy dense organs. The majority of chronic diseases
661
00:56:53.840 --> 00:56:59.440
either go in your heart or your brain. Those are where most your mitochondria are buried. But at the
662
00:56:59.440 --> 00:57:04.400
top of the podcast, you mentioned ovaries. That's the fun fact. The ovaries had the most mitochondria
663
00:57:04.400 --> 00:57:11.360
per cell at 100,000 because they're making a new human being. But the heart, it's making electricity
664
00:57:11.360 --> 00:57:18.640
and it's also making magnetic waves. You know, that magnetic wave comes out. I believe up to 30 feet
665
00:57:18.640 --> 00:57:25.200
from your body. So you literally have a connection with people when you're live in front of front
666
00:57:25.200 --> 00:57:30.480
from them. You can feel their vibrations. This is probably why when you get a gut feeling like,
667
00:57:30.480 --> 00:57:35.760
I don't like this person or something's off, you're sensing their fields. That obviously sounds
668
00:57:35.760 --> 00:57:40.080
rude, but it's actually not. They've been able to use these mega meters to actually measure the
669
00:57:40.080 --> 00:57:45.520
the magnetic frequencies coming off the body. And there's actually a company. I've been to their
670
00:57:45.520 --> 00:57:50.320
headquarters in Cincinnati and they're developing a scanner that basically measures the magnetic
671
00:57:50.320 --> 00:57:55.920
fields coming off your heart to be able to tell you what's going on inside your heart. Oh, I can't wait.
672
00:57:55.920 --> 00:58:02.960
Cannot become mainstream. I'm understanding around our body. Yeah, I would say, you know,
673
00:58:02.960 --> 00:58:07.920
it's funny. We're talking about these foundations that we should all be practicing, you know,
674
00:58:07.920 --> 00:58:11.520
although we don't tell the time things like exercise and nutrition.
675
00:58:13.200 --> 00:58:18.880
More often than not, when I'm working with someone and they're constantly in a state of stress
676
00:58:18.880 --> 00:58:24.720
or they're in, you know, they're just constant, sympathetic dominance. I often say to them,
677
00:58:24.720 --> 00:58:29.440
the healthiest diet in the world is not going to do a whole lot for you. Like you're stuck in a
678
00:58:29.440 --> 00:58:35.840
state where your body can't be optimized. And so when you speak about frequency and our energy
679
00:58:35.840 --> 00:58:41.760
radiating 30 feet from our body, you're obviously very familiar with heart math with the concept of
680
00:58:41.760 --> 00:58:48.000
coherence. And this is where I think ancient healing traditions really, they had mastery around it.
681
00:58:48.000 --> 00:58:53.920
Regulate your nervous system, come into your body, and then focus on the other modalities
682
00:58:53.920 --> 00:58:59.520
after that. There was never, oh, it's a busy, stressful day. Yeah, just go, go work really hard.
683
00:58:59.520 --> 00:59:05.600
And don't worry about what you're eating. It's like, no, no, no, stop. Breathe. Rest. Come into coherence.
684
00:59:05.600 --> 00:59:11.280
And this is where, you know, gratitude. Like I wish going back, if I, if my cardiologist,
685
00:59:11.280 --> 00:59:15.920
20 years ago, said, you know, before we start, I just want you to start to come into your body.
686
00:59:16.000 --> 00:59:21.520
Are you okay? What are you grateful for today? Like I think he would have just seen on my face,
687
00:59:21.520 --> 00:59:25.840
I would have had an immediate break down, tear down my face. He probably would have come,
688
00:59:25.840 --> 00:59:32.160
might become my therapist in the moment. But I think that we cannot forget this aspect of our heart,
689
00:59:32.160 --> 00:59:40.400
our frequency really matters. All right. So let's go, you know, you are an expert in this field.
690
00:59:40.400 --> 00:59:46.720
You put out so much education around it. What are some practices that you have around sleep
691
00:59:46.720 --> 00:59:53.040
optimization every night? So I start with what kind of an optimal day would be, you know,
692
00:59:53.680 --> 00:59:58.160
personally, I'm up by five every single day, and I don't hit snooze. There's no reason to
693
00:59:58.160 --> 01:00:03.280
hit snooze on your dreams is one of my business coaches told me. So get up, go about do what you
694
01:00:03.280 --> 01:00:08.800
need to do. So my practice, I'm up at five. The sun right right now rises at about seven a.m.
695
01:00:08.800 --> 01:00:13.680
So I have two hours where it's still dark out. So I wear my boo-bockers inside my place.
696
01:00:14.400 --> 01:00:18.560
I have some nice circadian rhythm-friendly lighting in my place. So it doesn't really bother me
697
01:00:18.560 --> 01:00:24.960
much there to have it be dimmer. I usually, I always meditate first thing in the morning. And then
698
01:00:24.960 --> 01:00:30.080
after that, go get the first cup of coffee and then eat their read almost into a podcast.
699
01:00:30.080 --> 01:00:35.280
The majority of days I go outside for about a 45 minute walk right around sunrise. I want to see
700
01:00:35.360 --> 01:00:39.280
the sun break the horizon. I don't think of that question. Do you have to actually see the sun?
701
01:00:39.280 --> 01:00:42.960
You just have to be outside. Some places I know you have trees or valleys. You can't see it.
702
01:00:42.960 --> 01:00:48.320
Just be outside, getting the light in your eyes. It's a good way to start the day. If you're trying
703
01:00:48.320 --> 01:00:53.200
to change body composition, and there's a concern that you're left and resistant, then you really
704
01:00:53.200 --> 01:00:58.800
should consider eating your first meal within an hour of sunrise. And then go about your day.
705
01:00:59.680 --> 01:01:05.360
But most of the work out most mornings on like doing a polypontide bride or
706
01:01:06.560 --> 01:01:11.520
some body weight exercises, then I come to the office by nine. I have a circadian rhythm-friendly
707
01:01:11.520 --> 01:01:17.600
office. Somebody knows what time it is. Go home. Usually do the strength training in the evening
708
01:01:17.600 --> 01:01:23.120
time. And I'm always for the most part eating within an hour of the sunset. Sometimes I can't
709
01:01:23.120 --> 01:01:28.720
really get before the sun sets. But my home is very nicely lit with red lights. It looks like
710
01:01:28.720 --> 01:01:35.200
a submarine at night sometimes where the biohacker glasses. Usually watch half-hour TV or some of
711
01:01:35.200 --> 01:01:39.920
that wind down. But I've usually shut down all the kind of things that are really going to ping
712
01:01:39.920 --> 01:01:44.480
your attention. I'm not checking cats or social media an hour or two before that. It's just
713
01:01:44.480 --> 01:01:51.280
talking to my wife or listening to a podcast. And then usually I'm bad by 9.9.30. And you're like,
714
01:01:51.280 --> 01:01:55.520
why do you go best early? It's like, well, I'm up at five. But it's actually the reverse.
715
01:01:55.520 --> 01:01:59.440
You almost should think about your day doesn't start when you wake up. Your day starts when you go
716
01:01:59.440 --> 01:02:04.320
to sleep. Yeah. You know, set a reversal alarm if you need to. Like set an alarm to go to bed.
717
01:02:04.320 --> 01:02:08.000
So you give the body the opportunity to sleep eight hours or so that you need.
718
01:02:08.000 --> 01:02:12.160
Maybe not get the whole eight hours, but give it your best shot. And if you're going to bed at nine,
719
01:02:12.160 --> 01:02:16.560
you're going to get up at five. I can't physically sleep more than that much time right now.
720
01:02:16.560 --> 01:02:19.760
Think about sleep is when your body is repairing those mitochondria engines.
721
01:02:20.400 --> 01:02:24.400
Some people, yes, can get by by six and a half, seven hours. But those are rare people.
722
01:02:24.400 --> 01:02:30.080
Some people need nine, 10 hours. When you've ever had a cold, you sleep more because you need
723
01:02:30.080 --> 01:02:34.400
more time for recovery. If you're sleeping a lot, that's a sign to your body that you probably need
724
01:02:34.400 --> 01:02:39.520
to be doing that. So charge up your body from the sleeping and then go about the good things
725
01:02:39.520 --> 01:02:44.240
you need to do for the day. Love that. Your day starts when you go to bed at night. You're really
726
01:02:44.240 --> 01:02:49.120
dictating the type of day you're going to have. Right. You mentioned the exercise that you do.
727
01:02:49.120 --> 01:02:54.480
Everyone's going to want to know we know strength. It's so important. You talked about protein and
728
01:02:54.480 --> 01:03:03.040
muscle mass cardiovascular health and doing cardio exercises. There's been a bunch of people
729
01:03:03.040 --> 01:03:08.080
who are out there saying cardio, don't do cardio, focus on weights. And I just think that such a
730
01:03:08.080 --> 01:03:14.400
disservice, you know, cardiovascular exercise for me on a treadmill. I get the greatest surge of
731
01:03:14.480 --> 01:03:19.840
happy endorphins that give me like just more light and energy for the day. But can you talk about
732
01:03:19.840 --> 01:03:25.200
the benefits of specific exercises for heart health? It's always going to depend on what the
733
01:03:25.200 --> 01:03:31.280
person's goals are. But most people, you know, they need a combination. They're going to need some
734
01:03:31.280 --> 01:03:35.280
type of cardiovascular training. They're going to need some type of string training. Ideally,
735
01:03:35.280 --> 01:03:39.680
you're doing some type of flexibility training. You need all of them. But it's just mostly how do
736
01:03:39.680 --> 01:03:46.480
you budget it in the time? Ballpark 80% of your cardio type exercises probably really should be in
737
01:03:46.480 --> 01:03:51.200
that kind of zone two type of range. Zone two has been here. Something talked about in the past
738
01:03:51.200 --> 01:03:56.000
few years, mostly from Peter Tia and Dr. Sam Milan. And they're a good podcast that they did a couple
739
01:03:56.000 --> 01:04:00.560
years ago. But zone two is at a pace where you could hold a conversation with somebody if you need
740
01:04:00.560 --> 01:04:04.080
it to. You shouldn't be how to breath. You're out of breath. You're getting into these higher
741
01:04:04.080 --> 01:04:09.120
heart rate zones. 10 out of 10, you're sprinting. You can't do this for more than 30 seconds.
742
01:04:09.120 --> 01:04:13.520
Right. This should be out of five out of 10 intensity. And then if you're wearing a chest strap
743
01:04:13.520 --> 01:04:18.240
and you're getting your heart rate, it's going to be about 60% to 70% of your maximal heart rate.
744
01:04:19.440 --> 01:04:25.280
So that is 80% of the stuff I do is a user out of Peloton. And then if I really kind of get
745
01:04:25.280 --> 01:04:28.880
a lot more time in my sketches on the weekends, I'll try to throw in like a zone five
746
01:04:28.880 --> 01:04:33.760
hit type training on the weekends. Unless you're a professional athlete or you're training for
747
01:04:33.760 --> 01:04:38.480
a vent, I'm just training for kind of like general cardiovascular health. But the strength training
748
01:04:38.480 --> 01:04:42.640
is that I think a lot of people fall down on myself included for many years, which is just like
749
01:04:42.640 --> 01:04:46.000
just do a bunch of cardio because that's what everybody told you to do. So you're doing the
750
01:04:46.000 --> 01:04:49.440
ellipticals or the bikes, but you're not doing a whole lot of weight training lists. We're in a
751
01:04:49.440 --> 01:04:54.240
culture that that was important to you. But the strength training is extremely important as well.
752
01:04:54.240 --> 01:04:59.920
I love that. And you really mentioned a variety, right? And the name of the game now, as we,
753
01:04:59.920 --> 01:05:05.280
I think anyone over 40, it's around prevention. You know, we've had our parents get stints in their
754
01:05:05.280 --> 01:05:09.280
heart or go on medications or got a bit of heart attack or a stroke. It's really all about
755
01:05:09.280 --> 01:05:14.000
prevention. So I think it's important for you to say that, especially if cardio does bring you joy
756
01:05:14.000 --> 01:05:19.760
and walking. You're talking about walking. Walking is magic. I force myself to walk every
757
01:05:19.760 --> 01:05:25.840
Monday last year. And it was a game changer. And I think it, yeah, it did so much for my, my health.
758
01:05:26.720 --> 01:05:30.640
It just helps you clear your mind and how your best ideas usually come when you're walking.
759
01:05:30.640 --> 01:05:35.440
Yeah. All right. So we've optimized our sleep. We've put in these inexpensive red lights into
760
01:05:35.440 --> 01:05:39.680
our house, our house, maybe some dinners. Maybe we have lit some candlelight. We're going to
761
01:05:39.680 --> 01:05:45.520
bed earlier. Now we'll wake up in the morning. What do you think has greater impact on cardiovascular
762
01:05:45.520 --> 01:05:48.320
health? Is it the stress that we feel or are diet that day?
763
01:05:50.080 --> 01:05:54.560
I mean, how is think about like food is just a structure of the system that the body's got to,
764
01:05:54.560 --> 01:06:00.000
you know, help mitigate, you know, food has to be processed, you know, through the mitochondria.
765
01:06:00.000 --> 01:06:03.920
There's going to be reactive oxygen species. You know, again, use the engine algae.
766
01:06:03.920 --> 01:06:08.240
You're burning fuel. There's going to be smoke. Hopefully your body is building up enough
767
01:06:08.240 --> 01:06:14.960
antioxidant defenses that that smoke is not damaging the rest of the system. So this is why
768
01:06:14.960 --> 01:06:21.040
food is not a holy energy. It's information to the system. So stress comes through many
769
01:06:21.040 --> 01:06:24.960
sources. You know, physical stress, you know, you're running. There's the mental stress, but
770
01:06:24.960 --> 01:06:29.520
eating is a stressor to the system. And so it's really about back to the mitochondria. It's like,
771
01:06:29.520 --> 01:06:32.880
what are you doing to support the mitochondria? If you have great mitochondria,
772
01:06:32.880 --> 01:06:37.120
you could probably put chicken nuggets in it all day long and go, go, go. There's a famous story
773
01:06:37.120 --> 01:06:42.560
that Usain Bolt and the O8 Olympics did not like the Olympic food in China. So he would go to
774
01:06:42.560 --> 01:06:45.920
McDonald's and get big things and chicken nuggets and then went out there and want to go
775
01:06:45.920 --> 01:06:51.280
muddle in the fastest time ever one by a, you know, man. So it shows you that food is not as
776
01:06:51.280 --> 01:06:55.600
important for everybody. If you have finely tuned engines, you could put anything into them.
777
01:06:55.600 --> 01:06:59.840
But if you're very sick, that's is not going to go as well for you. But that's the converse is
778
01:06:59.840 --> 01:07:05.200
when people are like, I put in all this great organic, clean food and I still don't feel good.
779
01:07:05.200 --> 01:07:08.880
It's because you have mitochondrial engines which you've never changed their spark plugs.
780
01:07:08.880 --> 01:07:11.360
That engine's not going to go turn her miles an hour the next day.
781
01:07:11.360 --> 01:07:17.520
You got it. Okay, that's great. And in terms of foods, so everyone wants to know from a cardiologist,
782
01:07:17.520 --> 01:07:20.080
what's the best diet to prevent cardiovascular disease?
783
01:07:21.280 --> 01:07:25.520
I don't think there's one best diet. It's the best diet for that person. It's mitochondria.
784
01:07:25.520 --> 01:07:30.800
But I really think DHA, the seafood story is absolutely critical. Without DHA, you're not going
785
01:07:30.800 --> 01:07:34.880
to optimize your cardiovascular health or your longevity. So seafood is the key. If you're
786
01:07:34.880 --> 01:07:38.560
absolutely allergic to it, then that's the one case where I say, okay, supplementation might be
787
01:07:38.560 --> 01:07:42.560
reasonable. But I don't want people to think that taking official pills is exactly when it's
788
01:07:42.560 --> 01:07:46.720
eating it. Mother Nature gave it to us on this special package. Yeah, there's kind of a constant
789
01:07:46.720 --> 01:07:51.600
echoing of a message like of going back to your mitochondrial health, how your body functions first
790
01:07:51.600 --> 01:07:55.920
and then figuring out what your body needs depending on what your lifestyle is, right?
791
01:07:56.960 --> 01:08:02.080
And you know, I think we all know at this point that it's those ultra-process foods that are really
792
01:08:02.800 --> 01:08:07.280
causing a dysfunction in our health. There was the onset and release of these types of foods that
793
01:08:07.280 --> 01:08:12.800
I'm sure you saw in your end, is when all these numbers started to rise. But if we look back at
794
01:08:12.800 --> 01:08:17.920
what our ancestors ate, if our grandmothers would recognize the food, then chances are we're probably
795
01:08:17.920 --> 01:08:22.960
a little bit more safe. Right. And it's, this would be probably like a two hour conversation
796
01:08:22.960 --> 01:08:26.960
about talking about Ethereum. But these highly processed foods are very rich in Ethereum,
797
01:08:26.960 --> 01:08:33.120
which is heavy hydrogen. Those heavy hydrogens basically break the engines inside Dermitocondria.
798
01:08:33.680 --> 01:08:39.520
So that's why regular seasonal whole foods is what Dermitocondria are optimized to utilize
799
01:08:39.520 --> 01:08:47.840
that time of year. Welcome back to Dermitocondria. It always does. But with that said, microplastics
800
01:08:47.840 --> 01:08:52.000
would see effective microplastics in other environmental toxins on cardiovascular health.
801
01:08:52.960 --> 01:08:56.160
Yeah, there's a big topic and there's a one that I spoke about on Drew's podcast.
802
01:08:56.160 --> 01:09:00.240
Yeah. Is that there was a study the other year that was looking at patients who had
803
01:09:00.240 --> 01:09:05.120
chronic endardorectomy. So they're having surgery to remove very severe plaques in the arteries
804
01:09:05.120 --> 01:09:08.800
going up to the brain. These are general patients that had strokes and they're trying to reduce the
805
01:09:08.800 --> 01:09:13.360
risk of having another stroke. When they took these plaques out, they basically literally almost
806
01:09:13.360 --> 01:09:17.520
scooped the plaque out of the chronic artery and then sewed the artery back up. They looked at those
807
01:09:17.520 --> 01:09:21.840
plaques under microscopes and ballparker cameras are exact numbers. But about half the
808
01:09:21.840 --> 01:09:27.440
patients had these plastics inside the lipid rich plaques that they're pulling out.
809
01:09:28.240 --> 01:09:34.080
The more interesting thing to me honestly is if 50% did, why don't 100% what were those other
810
01:09:34.080 --> 01:09:38.880
people doing that prevented it is probably the interesting thing. The microplastics, they're
811
01:09:38.880 --> 01:09:43.360
everywhere. Yeah, we're not going to get away from them completely, but we can mitigate the
812
01:09:43.360 --> 01:09:49.680
main sources. The big sources are going to be using plastic water bottles, drinking water that
813
01:09:49.680 --> 01:09:53.760
comes out of your refrigerator that goes through a plastic filter and you're drinking it. So you
814
01:09:53.760 --> 01:09:58.480
want to try to do some type of processing to your drinking water so that you're not drinking this
815
01:09:58.480 --> 01:10:03.680
stuff. But the microplastics, they're going to be unfortunately in our foodstuffs. It's going
816
01:10:03.680 --> 01:10:09.760
to take a long time to kind of clear this out. But I kind of have a little bit different perspective
817
01:10:09.760 --> 01:10:16.240
is that we have this glyco-calax, this gel coat that lines our arteries. The microplastics are
818
01:10:16.240 --> 01:10:22.000
just one more insult to potentially damage that glyco-calax. So can we remove the other things
819
01:10:22.000 --> 01:10:25.920
that we possibly can remove? Can we make sure that we're getting the right light signals? Are
820
01:10:25.920 --> 01:10:29.840
we eating a seasonally appropriate diet? Are we doing things we can do to support the glyco-calax?
821
01:10:29.840 --> 01:10:34.400
Because it's somewhat like a death by a thousand cuts. Microplastics is just one of those things.
822
01:10:34.400 --> 01:10:39.200
Right. Yeah, do an audit of your house. I think that's the best thing that you can do control
823
01:10:39.200 --> 01:10:46.160
as much as you can and then do your best when you're out. How would you say that your approach
824
01:10:46.160 --> 01:10:52.960
to assessing and preventing heart disease differs from traditional methods that people hear like a
825
01:10:52.960 --> 01:10:57.520
lot of a lot of the people listening, a lot of the people that I work with, they have their primary
826
01:10:57.520 --> 01:11:02.480
care doctor who works with a cardiologist that their father or maybe their grandfather saw.
827
01:11:03.280 --> 01:11:08.560
That it's hard to kind of step out of the relationship that we have with that doctor.
828
01:11:09.440 --> 01:11:13.040
How is your approach different? Obviously you've mentioned so much insight to the foundation of
829
01:11:13.040 --> 01:11:17.280
the body. What else are you doing in your practice that's really empowering people to prevent this
830
01:11:17.280 --> 01:11:23.360
disease? So my practice is more proactive and not as reactive. Of watching the majority of
831
01:11:23.360 --> 01:11:27.680
people that meet a cardiologist, it's because they're already having palpitations or shortness
832
01:11:27.760 --> 01:11:33.520
or breath or chest tightness. They go to a cardiologist, they do a stress test, they fail the
833
01:11:33.520 --> 01:11:38.880
stress test, they go get a heart catheterization. Oh, you have a severe blockage. Let's put some
834
01:11:38.880 --> 01:11:43.680
stenc in and then you're on the medication train. That's what they're very good at doing. I did it
835
01:11:43.680 --> 01:11:48.960
for many years and it is needed. It can save people's lives in the emergency, but that wasn't something
836
01:11:48.960 --> 01:11:53.360
I learned in the three years of cardiovascular training I did. We're talking about preventing
837
01:11:53.360 --> 01:11:56.880
heart attacks as much as we're treating the cute ones right in front of our face and you need
838
01:11:56.880 --> 01:12:02.320
somebody to do that. A cute work, but I just got more interested. Okay, what can we do to really
839
01:12:02.320 --> 01:12:06.880
slow the role of preventing this? I don't want to wait to somebody shows up with symptoms. I want to
840
01:12:06.880 --> 01:12:11.600
meet somebody when they're 22 years old, put them through a battery of tests, say, you're going to be
841
01:12:11.600 --> 01:12:16.240
at higher risk in your 40s. These are the things now. If you really prioritize your sleep, your stress
842
01:12:16.240 --> 01:12:22.080
management, you're not going to end up like your grandpa ran a heart attack at 55. Wow, proactive and
843
01:12:22.080 --> 01:12:28.800
preventative. I think it's the scariest part about heart disease, right? People that we hear
844
01:12:28.800 --> 01:12:35.520
who randomly just out of the blue had a heart attack or got forbidden died. As a woman,
845
01:12:36.320 --> 01:12:40.480
a stat that I'm hearing all the time is that I'm predisposed to have a heart attack on top of my
846
01:12:40.480 --> 01:12:45.920
genetic predisposition. This is the year in part of the inspiration also with reaching out to you
847
01:12:45.920 --> 01:12:50.640
and looking into different types of scans. For listeners who might have the same concern as me,
848
01:12:51.600 --> 01:12:56.880
who maybe have a father or a mother who went through some sort of cardiovascular heart disease,
849
01:12:58.080 --> 01:13:04.080
what scans are you doing? What are most effective? What should we be looking for yet? That's a great
850
01:13:04.080 --> 01:13:10.880
question. Blood work is a great starting point for many people, but it doesn't tell you what's
851
01:13:10.880 --> 01:13:15.200
actually going on in the cardiovascular system. You have to actually go look at the arteries
852
01:13:15.200 --> 01:13:22.800
non-invasive. Before 40, usually recommending people consider a crotted intimal
853
01:13:22.800 --> 01:13:27.680
medial thickness scan or CIMP. It's an ultrasound of the arteries on the side of the neck.
854
01:13:27.680 --> 01:13:31.840
It will assess, are you developing any plaque in the arteries? But we'll also look at how much
855
01:13:31.840 --> 01:13:36.560
inflammation is in your arteries. It looks at the thickness of the intima. If it's thick,
856
01:13:37.280 --> 01:13:42.160
if it's thick, your vascular ages can be higher than your biological age. You're aging faster than
857
01:13:42.320 --> 01:13:46.400
you should. There's a very strong correlation between what goes on in your crotted arteries and
858
01:13:46.400 --> 01:13:52.080
your coroneratars, your heart arteries. If you're over 40 and you've not had a hard attack,
859
01:13:52.080 --> 01:13:57.920
stroke, spencer bypass, then I recommend people consider getting a CT coroner calcium score on
860
01:13:57.920 --> 01:14:04.640
CAC score. It's a low dose CT scan, low dose radiation CT scan, usually going to be between
861
01:14:04.640 --> 01:14:09.760
about 100 and 200 US dollars. They give it almost like a mammogram for the heart. You're trying
862
01:14:09.760 --> 01:14:14.640
to find plaque well before you have your first symptom. It is not a perfect test, but it's a
863
01:14:14.640 --> 01:14:19.200
better test than a stress test. So, the reason a stress test is maybe not the best test is
864
01:14:19.200 --> 01:14:23.120
you're not going to fail stress test and you have severe disease. This is going to try to find
865
01:14:23.120 --> 01:14:27.280
disease well before you have your first symptom. So, if your calcium score is zero,
866
01:14:28.000 --> 01:14:32.720
then you're very low risk of having a heart attack. If your calcium score is over 400,
867
01:14:32.720 --> 01:14:37.520
you're higher risk. If your score is over 1,000, you're very high risk. So, it helps quantify
868
01:14:38.240 --> 01:14:42.320
people. I've seen patients in their 80s with calcium scores of zero. I've seen, unfortunately,
869
01:14:42.320 --> 01:14:46.640
John was 37 years old and his score was in the 1300s, which is the highest score I'd ever seen
870
01:14:46.640 --> 01:14:50.080
in somebody under the age of 40. So, I kind of changed my perspective because I used to not
871
01:14:50.080 --> 01:14:54.720
really start screening people at that scan until they were 40 or later, but now with this gentleman,
872
01:14:54.720 --> 01:14:59.600
I'm starting to back down to maybe 35, 30 if they're the right family history. So, it's a very good
873
01:14:59.600 --> 01:15:06.160
test to start with, but if people like, I have a very strong family history and I want to know
874
01:15:06.160 --> 01:15:09.920
exactly what's going on in my cardiovascular arteries, the issue with the calcium score test is
875
01:15:09.920 --> 01:15:14.880
it cannot see the more immature soft plaque and it's often the soft plaque that's causing the heart
876
01:15:14.880 --> 01:15:22.160
attacks. So, there's a test called a CT cornea angiogram, more radiation, more financial cost,
877
01:15:22.160 --> 01:15:27.120
and it does require an IV to get IV contrast because they're going to fill your arteries up with
878
01:15:27.120 --> 01:15:32.240
this contrast so they can take a picture inside the arteries to tell you how much core blockages
879
01:15:32.400 --> 01:15:36.880
or stenosis you have, but more importantly, as you can take those images, send them to a company
880
01:15:36.880 --> 01:15:42.720
called Clearly and their AI machine learning algorithms can tell you exactly what types of plaques
881
01:15:42.720 --> 01:15:46.720
you have in your artery walls. So, a thing of plaque is like an iceberg. You're just trying to
882
01:15:46.720 --> 01:15:51.600
figure out how much is an arter wall and is it hard plaque, which is kind of a scar and just
883
01:15:51.600 --> 01:15:55.600
that's just going to be there or is it salt plaque that if you don't do something about,
884
01:15:55.600 --> 01:15:58.720
more likely will cause your an event heart attack down the road.
885
01:15:59.120 --> 01:16:04.560
That's the scarier plaque. And are there any risks to doing the CT cornea angiogram?
886
01:16:06.480 --> 01:16:12.480
There's small risks from a contrast reaction. Most people, if they've had a CT in the past with
887
01:16:12.480 --> 01:16:16.160
contrast and they didn't have a reaction, they're going to be okay, but if you've had a reaction
888
01:16:16.160 --> 01:16:20.480
in the past, then they have to pre-medicate you with steroids and so you don't have a allergic
889
01:16:20.480 --> 01:16:28.080
response to the contrast. There is a, you know, not small, but it's not a large amount of radiation.
890
01:16:28.080 --> 01:16:34.720
So, radiation, you know, at a height of dose will induce DNA damage. So, if you get the scan
891
01:16:34.720 --> 01:16:38.960
once, not a concern. This is not a scan that you're going to do every year for the rest of your
892
01:16:38.960 --> 01:16:43.920
life. The risk of potentially causing a cancer starts to increase when the medical radiation
893
01:16:43.920 --> 01:16:50.400
dose gets high enough. So, I've had the scan done twice personally, you know, I probably would repeat
894
01:16:50.400 --> 01:16:54.640
it every two to three years for myself, but I always work on the patients that okay, it doesn't
895
01:16:54.640 --> 01:16:59.680
make sense for them. Fascinating. Yeah, this is the year I'm definitely curious for myself and
896
01:16:59.680 --> 01:17:04.960
for my husband, and I'm looking into clearly. Are you connected with clearly at all? I know clearly
897
01:17:04.960 --> 01:17:11.680
because of you. So, it's C-O-E-E-R-L-Y and you have to find a practitioner who can go through
898
01:17:11.680 --> 01:17:16.400
your results, but why not? I feel like the more information that you have in terms of something
899
01:17:16.400 --> 01:17:21.680
that like the earlier that you catch it, prevention is everything, right? So, why not? Yeah.
900
01:17:21.680 --> 01:17:28.320
Correct. It's, you know, I was a math major in college. Yeah, I'm very data-centric. It's like,
901
01:17:28.320 --> 01:17:32.080
and I'm also from Missouri, you have to show me. Show me your arteries are healthy,
902
01:17:32.080 --> 01:17:36.400
then you can keep doing whatever nutrition plan sounds good to you. But if we find things that
903
01:17:36.400 --> 01:17:41.040
are putting you into a high risk category, then we really have a conversation. Is this, you know,
904
01:17:41.040 --> 01:17:45.680
dietary plan optimal for you? Are you truly managing your stress and sleep as well as you need to?
905
01:17:46.800 --> 01:17:50.320
Your health is in your own hands. Your doctors are supposed to be the sharpest. It's just
906
01:17:50.320 --> 01:17:54.480
supposed to help you figure out what's going on and try to point you in the right direction.
907
01:17:54.480 --> 01:18:00.400
You got it. We're going to start to wrap things up that went by so fast. I guess in closing,
908
01:18:00.400 --> 01:18:06.480
people are going to want to know. So, I feel really happy for the amount of plants that I worked with,
909
01:18:06.480 --> 01:18:11.600
who their doctor kind of had that major reaction to write a prescription for libator. And then
910
01:18:11.600 --> 01:18:15.600
all of a sudden, they had a doctor who could be their partner to get off of libator.
911
01:18:16.560 --> 01:18:21.920
Not all doctors are open to this. Let me know your thoughts on how, you know, prevalent these
912
01:18:21.920 --> 01:18:28.240
prescriptions are happening. But also, maybe your top three takeaways for listeners on things
913
01:18:28.240 --> 01:18:34.080
that they can practice if they were given that prescription. So, I always talk about like
914
01:18:34.080 --> 01:18:38.960
stands or tools. You know, use the right tool for the job. So, if you've already had a heart attack,
915
01:18:38.960 --> 01:18:43.280
strobe, stench, or bypass, it is a good tool because it's going to reduce your risk of having
916
01:18:43.520 --> 01:18:48.160
that again. Where it gets more into the gray zone is when we're talking about primary prevention.
917
01:18:48.160 --> 01:18:53.120
You've never had a cardiovascular bad. And you have a quote, high cholesterol. Do those people
918
01:18:53.120 --> 01:18:59.200
benefit as much? I'm going to always say it really depends. It really depends on, you know, what are your
919
01:18:59.200 --> 01:19:04.240
other risk factors? If you have lipopartinolab, you're probably going to benefit more than somebody who
920
01:19:04.240 --> 01:19:08.800
doesn't have lipopartin A. But I'm always going to want to look at the arteries. If your calcium
921
01:19:08.800 --> 01:19:13.120
score is zero, your CIMT, your cryo scan is normal. And you're like, I really don't want to be on
922
01:19:13.120 --> 01:19:18.320
medication right now. I'm going to say, well, your risk seems relatively low at this point. Do
923
01:19:18.320 --> 01:19:22.000
what lifestyle interventions you're going to do. And let's repeat things in a few months and see
924
01:19:22.000 --> 01:19:27.200
how well the lifestyle interventions are done. If lifestyle works, what you want it to do, great.
925
01:19:27.200 --> 01:19:31.120
If it doesn't work, you still get benefit by making lifestyle changes. You potentially reduce your
926
01:19:31.120 --> 01:19:35.760
risk of insulin resistance or cancer or Alzheimer's. You still get the benefits. It just may not have
927
01:19:35.760 --> 01:19:39.200
fully optimized your lipopartines for the risk reduction that you're looking for.
928
01:19:40.400 --> 01:19:45.280
Some people really just cannot tolerate the stands from whatever reason. They may have muscle
929
01:19:45.280 --> 01:19:49.600
symptoms. They may have brain fog. Some people times it affects their blood sugar enough.
930
01:19:49.600 --> 01:19:56.400
Okay, there's other tools to utilize. I often use a company called Boston Heart because you can
931
01:19:56.400 --> 01:20:00.240
kind of tell, is it more initially that their liver is producing too much cholesterol? And the
932
01:20:00.240 --> 01:20:04.640
stand would be a really likely option to work well for them. Or is there something where their
933
01:20:04.640 --> 01:20:08.960
gut is recycling too much cholesterol? And medication called the Zedomybe would work better for those
934
01:20:08.960 --> 01:20:14.720
people. So I can sometimes find to say, well, let's try this tool for you and then repeat in a few
935
01:20:14.720 --> 01:20:18.560
months to see how well that would work for that person. Such good insight. And I think it's so
936
01:20:18.560 --> 01:20:22.880
important to know, like I think there is a time and a place for all of these medications when there's
937
01:20:22.880 --> 01:20:28.240
a need. Some of my clients are on a statin out of necessity. I think it's a really, really good
938
01:20:28.240 --> 01:20:34.800
choice. And it's partnered with either a doctor or practitioner who is educating them on the pillars
939
01:20:34.800 --> 01:20:40.560
of the core foundations of healing. All right, how do you communicate with your audience? What's
940
01:20:40.560 --> 01:20:46.960
against the treat? You're able to find you. So I'm on Instagram a little bit, I say every Monday,
941
01:20:46.960 --> 01:20:51.440
6 p.m. Central time. I do and ask me anything for about 30 minutes. So people can submit their
942
01:20:51.440 --> 01:20:56.400
questions ahead of time. I'll take some live questions as well. I have a YouTube channel,
943
01:20:56.400 --> 01:21:03.040
it's just my name, Dr. Twyman.tv goes to the YouTube channel and then to be to search for my name on
944
01:21:03.040 --> 01:21:08.080
that kind of the whatever podcast I have to use. I don't know, 70, 80 different podcasts. The two
945
01:21:08.080 --> 01:21:12.560
I've done with Drew are kind of like master classes on lipoproteins and vascular health. That's
946
01:21:12.560 --> 01:21:17.920
a good one. I've recently one day one with Dave Asprey. He was kind of the the biohacker that got me
947
01:21:17.920 --> 01:21:21.600
into understanding what these bluebockers did. So I talked a little bit more about light in those
948
01:21:21.600 --> 01:21:25.760
ones. So there's a particular topic that resonate with you. We talked about today. Just search my name
949
01:21:25.920 --> 01:21:30.800
and that topic and I probably talked about it deeper on a different podcast. Wonderful. Yeah,
950
01:21:30.800 --> 01:21:36.720
you're a great teacher. All right, some quick rapid-fire questions to ask. Sure. What are some of the
951
01:21:36.720 --> 01:21:41.920
most common mistakes or misconceptions that you're seeing people make with their health? Do they
952
01:21:41.920 --> 01:21:47.040
think it's all about diet? Thank you. Diet's not even the first place that I start. I actually
953
01:21:47.040 --> 01:21:52.880
start with my plans. I love these at that. What's one way that women are making healing and health
954
01:21:52.880 --> 01:22:03.120
to complicate it? I don't know if it necessarily is just women in general, but it's probably that
955
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I would say that that they don't understand that the cardiovascular risk is when they're pre-menopausal,
956
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it's less than a man, but once they're postmenopausal, it's equal to a man. And your risk of cardiovascular
957
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disease is significantly higher than your breast cancer risk. So you want to make sure that your
958
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heart is checking out just as your boyfriend or husband's heart is checking out good. Absolutely. Yeah,
959
01:22:25.840 --> 01:22:30.560
that's why we're doing this together. Dr. Chweiman, do you have a favorite ancient healing remedy?
960
01:22:33.200 --> 01:22:39.040
It probably would be, I don't know, it probably would be meditation. I just found it by accident.
961
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I initially started with just one of the apps on the phone. I was the headspace one and I literally
962
01:22:43.680 --> 01:22:48.560
still can have like that anti-guys voice in my head sometimes when I'm doing it, but it was literally
963
01:22:48.560 --> 01:22:52.720
the best health habit I picked up in the past five, six years. It's the one that,
964
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short of, I don't mess with my circadian rhythms. It's the one habit I don't skip. I don't miss days.
965
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I think I got a hundred and forty seven days streak right down the meditation app I'm using. So
966
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I think your mind really controls the body. So sickness is something that for most part comes from
967
01:23:11.760 --> 01:23:15.760
the mind, but it's a lot of it's mitochondria dysfunction. So it's everything we just talked about
968
01:23:15.760 --> 01:23:20.960
for past hour plus focus on healing the mitochondria and start with your mind set first.
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01:23:20.960 --> 01:23:26.000
I love it. And lastly, if you could leave our listeners with the takeaway of something that you
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01:23:26.000 --> 01:23:32.640
feel really passionate and excited about right now, what would it be? Well, one, yeah, don't miss
971
01:23:32.640 --> 01:23:36.240
this on rise for the rest of your days. If you optimize your circadian rhythms, things are going
972
01:23:36.240 --> 01:23:42.160
to go much better, but I think there's great technology coming out in the near future that's
973
01:23:42.160 --> 01:23:46.400
really going to help optimize people's ability to screen for cardiovascular disease at an even
974
01:23:46.400 --> 01:23:51.520
earlier stage. And then people are going to be able to be very more proactive. You know, at times,
975
01:23:51.520 --> 01:23:55.360
yes, you may need a doctor if things are getting too bad, but I think a lot of things will be able
976
01:23:55.360 --> 01:24:01.120
to be screened at home and people can start staying kind of more proactive on their own, but not
977
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necessarily waiting until they're symptomatic. I love it. And thank you. And thank you for really
978
01:24:06.400 --> 01:24:13.280
shedding light today on, you know, on the mitochondria, like really just optimizing the ability that our
979
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bodies have to heal itself and how that in and of itself is prevention for so many diseases. So
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01:24:18.960 --> 01:24:29.280
thank you so much, Dr. Toyman. You're very welcome.